habitable planet tagged posts

Looking for Extrasolar planets: DARKNESS lights the way

DARKNESS (the DARK-speckle Near-infrared Energy-resolved Superconducting Spectrophotometer) can detect planets around the nearest stars. Credit: Image courtesy of University of California - Santa Barbara

DARKNESS (the DARK-speckle Near-infrared Energy-resolved Superconducting Spectrophotometer) can detect planets around the nearest stars. Credit: Image courtesy of University of California – Santa Barbara

Physicists and astronomers commission the most advanced superconducting camera in the world. Somewhere in the vastness of the universe another habitable planet likely exists. And it may not be that far – astronomically speaking – from our own solar system. Distinguishing that planet’s light from its star, however, can be problematic. But an international team led by UC Santa Barbara physicist Benjamin Mazin has developed a new instrument to detect planets around the nearest stars. It is the world’s largest and most advanced superconducting camera...

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Nearby Star Hosts Closest Alien Planet in the ‘Habitable Zone’

This is a simulation of the orbital configuration of the Wolf 1061 system. Wolf 1061 is an inactive red dwarf star, smaller and cooler than our sun, 14 light years away. The orbits for the planets b, c and d (ordered from the inner planet to the outer) have periods of 4.9 days, 17.9 days and 67.2 days. In the simulation we show the planet orbits as all lying in a single plane. The planetary habitable zone around the star is marked in green -- the colors grade from red (where a planet would be too hot), through green (where the surface of a planet could sustain liquid water), through to blue (where a planet would be too cold). Credit: Made using Universe Sandbox 2 software from universesandbox.com

This is a simulation of the orbital configuration of the Wolf 1061 system. Wolf 1061 is an inactive red dwarf star, smaller and cooler than our sun, 14 light years away. The orbits for the planets b, c and d (ordered from the inner planet to the outer) have periods of 4.9 days, 17.9 days and 67.2 days. In the simulation we show the planet orbits as all lying in a single plane. The planetary habitable zone around the star is marked in green — the colors grade from red (where a planet would be too hot), through green (where the surface of a planet could sustain liquid water), through to blue (where a planet would be too cold). Credit: Made using Universe Sandbox 2 software from universesandbox.com

UNSW astronomers have discovered the closest potentially habitable planet found outside our sol...

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